Late Night: The Heart of the Matter

Don Henley, 1991, The Heart of the Matter: "How can love survive in such a graceless age?"

The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again
I've been tryin' to get down
to the Heart of the Matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness

...Better put it all behind you, life goes on
You keep carrying that anger, it'll eat you up inside

I wish people would withhold judgment and not put themselves in their shoes. I hope the Lettermans can forgive, forget and and move on.

BERN, Switzerland - Roman Polanski lost his first bid to win his freedom Tuesday as the Swiss Justice Ministry rejected an appeal by the 76-year-old to be immediately released from prison, an official said.

"We continue to be of the opinion that there is a high risk of flight," said ministry spokesman Folco Galli, explaining the decision.

Galli told The Associated Press that the risk was too great for the government to accept bail or other security measures in exchange for the release of the filmmaker who is wanted by U.S. authorities for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl. link

in February and has since undergone two months of radiation treatment.

Petraeus, 56, was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer, which was not publicly disclosed at the time because Petraeus and his family regarded his illness as "a personal matter" that "did not interfere with the performance of his duties," said his spokesman, Col. Erik Gunhus. President Barack Obama and top members of his administration were informed, he said. link

Three American "masters of light" who created technologies that made it possible to capture digital images and transmit them and other electronic information long distances today won the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics.

Charles K. Kao, a naturalized American who did most of his work in England and Hong Kong, will share half the $1.4-million prize for demonstrating that highly purified fibers of glass can carry light waves for long distances, setting the stage for the globe-girdling fiber-optic networks that transmit the bulk of everyday television, telephone and other communications.

Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, who worked at Bell Laboratories, will share the other half of the award for developing the charge-coupled device, the electronic eye that makes digital photography possible and that in less than two decades has filled the world with inexpensive digital cameras and camera-bearing telephones.

The older I get the more I realize I will not be able to pay the 20% of these hospital costs, should I need them. When my mom was in the nursing home, all her bills came to me. From $900 for an ambulance ride to go one mile, to bills in the tens of thousands if she fractured her pelvis or got too disoriented to stay in the nursing home. Even with secondary insurance, she had to contribute thousands.

It's probably why I pay the extra premium to have a plan that pays 100% of drugs, doctors and hospitals. One of my fears is that this HCR bill will result in the insurance companies canceling their 100% coverage plans, or making them extremely cost prohibitive, so that option is no longer available.

I had hoped by this time to have "investments" that would carry me through the final yeers, but I don't. I'll be working until I can't work any more. And even then, how do we pay the increased costs assigned to us? We will either have plans with reduced benefits, plans with exhorbitive premiums or we will be forced into low end plans at a time they will do little for us.

I'd like to see someone promise between Medicare age, which I'm still years away from, and secondary insurance, we pay nothing but our premiums and deductibles.

comments about this as the bills start rolling in. He had a heart attack just 2 years ago and it paid 100% of the hospital after deductible ($2500), but not a dime toward the expensive follow-up tests.

I had just gotten him connected with our broker for medical insurance, but his new plan doesn't take effect until the first of next month. That's a typical deductible ($500) and 100% coverage.

I'm with you...just a couple of months ahead of you in age and no investments to cover anything medical. If I learn anything of value through his experience, I'll be sure to share.

as long as you don't own anything the hospital can seize, and don't mind workin' till the day you die...you're good to go! At least thats my plan...though I do have insurance at the moment, I don't expect it to deliver if I got some multi-hundred thousand dollar illness. And I'm cancelling that sh*t is the mandate fines/prison sh*t passes.

Or just be ready to sell your house & car to a relative for a buck if you ever do get really sick...that works too.

When the going gets shady, the good people gotta get shady or the good people are cooked. We didn't make the rules of this crooked game, but we have no choice but to play, so we gotta start getting shady like we're all insurance co ceo's...they ain't any smarter, just shadier.

I tried to convince my mother to divorce my step father when he had a major stroke and heart attack so that she could protect her assets. Guilt got in her way and it ended up costing both her and I thousands of dollars to keep a roof over her head.

It's a little harder for the old-timers steeped in the "truth, justice, American way" myth to get on board the shady train...the youth are catching on as the "truth, justice" myth gets harder and harder to swallow.

a cap for how much out of pocket you will be responsible for each year?

My brother is 3 years younger than us, and to look at him, you'd say he was in perfect physical shape. He just got my dad's cholesterol/heart problems and my mom's kidney problems. He could have many years ahead of dealing with medical issues...he's a self-employed artist, so if he isn't working, there's no income.

Based on what others are saying about their health insurance, I'm thinking my state has some pretty good rates for reasonably good coverage.

I'm not signing any petitions, or sending money to any of the plethora of groups claiming they are lobbying for healthcare....I'm actively writing to all my elected officials and letting them know what experiences my family is having so they understand why I'm asking them to fight for single-payer first, robust public option second, or to vote NO if insurance companies are the only winners in the plan.

Provisions included in his plan allow the insurance industry to charge people between 50 - 64, four times that of a younger person. Also, his plan allows the insurance industry to only cover 65% or 70% of costs of medical care. If adopted, I worry that ratio could become the new standard.

though, from family history of nephritis noted below, that we don't need both or even one kidney to have a good life. I've lived with less than one for half a century now -- a time in which much progress has been made in kidney treatment.

I certainly remain more susceptible to some problems and complications -- and some of those tests that I describe as having been devised in the Marquis de Sade School of Medicine -- but I continue to be amazed at all that I have been able to do in that half-century. And at the time, the prognosis was that I wouldn't live past 30, that I wouldn't be able to survive pregnancy, etc. So I'm hoping that all is well for your brother, and that he and I both will see even more medical progress for decades to come.

The original videos for both songs were great (as was the one for Boys of Summer), but Henley has such a thing about royalties that it's hard to find them anywhere online -- I have them on VHS tapes but if put them on You Tube, they'd be gone immediately and if I put them on TalkLeft, he'd probably sue me. He wouldn't care I'm probably his biggest fan.

high school when the song was released, and it really spoke to me. It was as if I knew that this old gentleman from the Eagles understood the terribleness that was the 80's. The video made it clear that it was about Reagan, Oliver North, and the evil that was the Republican 80's. There was one image of a peeling Reagan sign on the side of a building. I bought the album, on cassette tape. Heh. The VIDEO